The present invention generally relates to updating anti-malware products for mobile telephones. More specifically, the present invention relates to transmitting anti-malware product updates to mobile telephones via voice telephone calls.
Malicious software, or malware, such as viruses, spyware, adware, worms, etc., is software designed to infiltrate and/or damage computer systems without their owners' consent. Malware attacks computer systems both large and small, such as workstations, personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart mobile telephones (smartphones), etc. and often causes great damages. Needless to say, it is very important to protect all types of computer systems against various forms of malware.
Many software applications have been developed to protect computer systems against various types of malware. Regardless of the types of computer systems such software applications protect, one common feature among anti-malware applications is that the software needs to be updated from time to time. For example, as new types of malware appear, the anti-malware applications need to be updated with new malware patterns, i.e., information about the new malware, in order for the anti-malware to be able to detect and combat the new malware. Similarly, as new versions of the anti-malware applications become available, the older versions of the anti-malware applications need to be updated in order to incorporate new features and/or functionalities. Often, the anti-malware developers transmit product updates to their customers whenever necessary to update their software.
There are different ways to transmit anti-malware product updates to the customers. For example, with computer systems connected to the Internet, the product updates may be transmitted via the Internet. With other types of systems, such as mobile telephones, product updating via the Internet may not be the best solution, because many mobile telephones are not often connected to the Internet. In fact, some mobile telephones, especially mobile telephones located in certain regions, may rarely be connected to the Internet. Other times, connecting to the Internet from mobile telephones may be very expensive. As a result, mobile telephone customers may not be able to receive product updates for their anti-malware quickly via the Internet.
With mobile telephones, anti-malware product updating may be done in several alternative ways, but each has some shortcomings. For example, a mobile telephone customer may download product updates manually via the Internet. In this case, if the customer does not connect to the Internet and check for product updates frequently enough, there may be a long delay before he or she receives the most recent updates. Then, the anti-malware on the customer's mobile telephone may not be up-to-date and critical updates may not be applied in time to deter new types of malware.
Alternatively, the mobile telephone customer may receive product updates from other mobile telephones via Bluetooth® connections. In this case, there is a limitation in transmission distance, which is inherent in Bluetooth® technologies. Or, the mobile telephone customer may receive product updates via multimedia messaging service (MMS). In this case, there is a limitation in the size of the data being transmitted, as many telecommunications companies providing MMS limit the transmission sizes. The mobile telephone customer may receive product updates via peer-to-peer transfer. In this case, the customer still needs to connect to the Internet first, which may be inconvenient and/or expensive.
Accordingly, what are needed are systems and methods to improve the process of updating anti-malware for mobile telephones.